We had a visiting engineer from Austria, and we were making .264 caliber bullets on our CNC lathe.

Suddenly, there was an almighty bang, followed by loud hissing!

The machine shut off.

We found the cause was a pressure distribution switch.

This switch has four outlets that high pressure hoses fit in.

It has a funny sort of lock that holds the hose in.

One of these has failed, and hose has come loose.

We tried to fit the hose back, but it will not lock in place.

We do not have any spare, so either shut down or improvise.

I thought of trying to add thickness to the hose by wrapping PTFE tape around it, then stick it in and super glue it.

Everyone thought it will not work, because of the high pressure.

Anyway, I did that, and left everything to dry while we had some refreshments.

With fingers crossed, we turned the compressor on, and everyworked like a charm.

We are back in production!

Necessity is the mother of invention.

Saeed:

You have Emco or what brand?

Adapt and overcome...

Semper Fi

Saeed, I also like to improvise and I feel a great sense of pride when my "bubblegum and bailing wire" repairs work.

Having said that, if this was posted by a new member instead of you we would be looking at the start of a multipage thread denouncing you as a "bubba" and chastising you for not "spending the time and money to repair it correctly".

quote:

Originally posted by Jiri:
Saeed:

You have Emco or what brand?

Yes, ours is an EMCO TURN 3II.

We also have an EMCOMAT 15D as our main gunsmithing lathe.

I use this one for all our rifle building.

Fantastic machines.

Saeed

I like Emco too. I have access to Emcomat fb-450l milling machine. Simple (3 axes, manual tool change), but good and very accurate one.

Jiri

Made a few sample bullets in brass, all with the PTFE and super glue fix

I once super glued valve stems back into the wheels on my '66 scout, it worked for a couple winters of plowing snow.

Saeed:

Very nice bullets. What brass (and hardness) do you use?

quote:

Originally posted by Jiri:
Saeed:

Very nice bullets. What brass (and hardness) do you use?

We only use pure brass and pure copper.

I would still order a new part.

quote:

Originally posted by p dog shooter:
I would still order a new part.

I have, but at least we can continue making bullets than twiggle our fingers until the new part comes

Every true.

A farmers fix for sure.

Dave

I'll take 500 of the 138 gr .264's.

Saeed:

Pure copper is clear.

But brass is an alloy, composition may vary. Also the same composition could be produced with multiple hardness.

What I know for bullet making is used leaded brass, such as C360.

quote:

Originally posted by Jiri:
Saeed:

Pure copper is clear.

But brass is an alloy, composition may vary. Also the same composition could be produced with multiple hardness.

What I know for bullet making is used leaded brass, such as C360.

You are complicating things by science, which is very hard for us to understand.

I buy my copper and brass rods from wholesale dealers, who sell them as BRASS rods or COPPER rods.

Quality is never mentioned

They all seem to be of very similar quality.

Here is an example.

Our rods come in 4 meter lengths.

We cut them to 60cm lengths to fit in our machine.

We have no idea if all the rods are from the same production lot.

But, again, this does not matter for us.

We maintain the size of the bullet to very close tolerances, and weigh each bullet produced.

And segregate them by weight.